"The dam safety people from the DEQ, they came down Johnny on the spot, looked at it and they said they felt like a breach was imminent," said Pearl River County Emergency Management Director Danny Manley.

The dam in question is located on a 50 acre lake in the Amackertown area northwest of Poplarville near the Louisiana line. It is also located on private property.

But state authorities, including Dusty Myers of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality "Came down, looked at it. Pretty serious situation. We felt like the dam was in imminent danger of failure," Myers said.

While the landowner did not want TV cameras on the property, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality was about to provide photographs, showing the size of the problem and the scope of the work.

A decision was made quickly to bring in a private contractor to dig a relief channel lowering the level of the lake and taking the pressure off the dam. The effort appears to be working.

"Even if we were to have a total failure, we've already dropped the level of the lake by a couple of feet," Manley said.

Both the dam and lake are located in a very sparsely populated area, but the alert went out just to be on the safe side. Then attention turned to a highway bridge that would be directly in the path of any potential breach.

"Again we looked for downstream hazards to see what would be impacted from the failure," said Myers. "And the only thing we identified was the bridge on 43 that we were concerned over, and right now I think we are in good shape."

A team from the Mississippi Department of Transportation came in to inspect the bridge to insure its safety.

The main concern now is the weather, which is expected to change dramatically.

"It really depends on how much rain we get, how much impact that has on the project. I think we're probably going to be here for a couple of more days at least monitoring the situation," Myers predicted.

Work continues to lower the level of the lake so that repairs can be made to the dam, weather permitting.